*Note: As I am an adult, this blog may contain content inappropriate for children*

Silkenvoice

Giving voice to the sensual immediacy of life

Friday, February 29, 2008

Birthday in Monterey

I am 40 now, a pisces child born in the year of the monkey. A Monkeyfish. Nothing so beautiful as a jellyfish, I think.

Mostly right now I feel vaguely fatigued, and somewhat old. MR says I'm a four-year-old with a big "O" on the end. I told my family and they laughed. It is very appropriate. I'm growing older but not 'up'. And "The Big O" as we all know, is an orgasm. And I am so terribly fond of my Os.

So despite the grief and stress, I suppose I am still young at heart, and my friend MR indulged my inner child. We went to Monterey for my birthday and stayed at a nice hotel on Cannery Row called The Spindrift. We had dinner at an upscale restaurant with "Sardine" in its name, and then spent most of the following day at the Aquarium. Wow. I've been to many aquariums, and I enjoyed this one the most. The lighting is designed for optimum viewing of the fish, but is dismal for purposes of photographing them. Dark rooms and lighted tanks made my camera want to flash--and flashes cause reflections off the glass. Turning off the flash means the lens aperture stays open longer, and all the wonderful creatures moving around are captured as blurs. Still, I got a few good photos, and I found myself particularly fascinated by the jellyfish.

The drive from Monterey to San Francisco was pleasant. It was a clear evening, the hills were green, and the fudge we picked up on our way out of town was sweet.

Even in the midst of loss and grief, its nice to have reminders that life is good.

"Good idea. You can sleep here on the boat and I'll see you when we wake up."

"You're so bad..." I chuckled tiredly.

"I'll hold you, and the boat can rock you to sleep. I know you like that."

"I do..."

I stopped by the escalator. I was so tired that I swayed under the weight of my briefbag.

Kurt gave me directions from the airport to the marina, the rich timbre of his voice flowing through me. Potent, it was like a caress down my spine. I felt his large hands scoop my ass and pull me close to him.

"See you in what--half an hour?"

I was too tired to argue, and his boathouse was much closer than my place.

"Sooner than that. I left my luggage in San Francisco."

"You're going back?" Kurt sounded cautious. He accepted my relationships with the other men in my life, but he was concerned about the one in San Francisco.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Ode to Earth

If clouds are her curls waving in the wind,whitecaps the frothy lace of her blue-grey skirtsslightly worn and often dingythe sandy beach her legs, mostly smooththe pebbles gooseflesh and the cliffs her feet,then what is the asphalt and concretebut cracked and creeping fissures of an ageof desperation and malicious destiny?And what am I, and all my kindin the scheme of geology?What of the liquid hydrocarbon, the controlled hemorrhaging of whichkeeps her weak and pliable?Our rash of boxy blemishes a speading poxfollowing the razor burn of denuded forests?When the time of reckoning comeswill she lower her skirts, let the lace creep up the shores,swirl past the cliffs of her toesand seal our fates in a watery tomb?Or will she breathe in her blood turned to gasraise her skirts and withdrawuntil our foolishness causes the endof the Primate Period?

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Footprints

We walked through sand stained black Some ship spilled darkness that transformed sepia brown to exotic inkinessI tried to pretend I was in Hawaii, or some other volcanic isle and when that failed I pondered the meaning of light for just a moment it being far too weighty a topic for an afternoon strollso I turned to my companion and asked If some catastrophe happened, and the shoeprints upon the sand were petrified,would those who uncovered them a million years hence know they were all made by the same species?

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Today at the beach

The wind tasted of sunlight and salt, tastedlike the hopes of hungry seabirds flinging themselves ahead of the fogretreated beyond the reach of the naked eye but waitingfor the wind to reap the whitecaps of their tearsand send the moist blanket of oblivion rolling up the sand

The tide exposed the sand dollars, those rounds of creams and purples, stripped them of their camouflage, revealing their secret palmate etchingsknown to man and bird alike, neither of whom bothers to note the underside carved by ten rivers flowing into a single hole

Life is fragile as the sand dollar brokenby the gull's beakcomforted by sea foam whose bubbles hold captive a thousand rainbows waiting for the fog to free themfrom the suffering of the light

Friday, February 15, 2008

Does heaven have enough angels yet?

Taking a moment to grieve and miss my sister Tammy, I went through some photos while listening to music. This song came on, and I dissolved into tears when I heard Tracy Chapman asking "Does heaven have enough angels yet?" Such an achingly sad song. I flashed to Caro laying in her bed, arms slathered with methadone and promethazine and haloperidol. She looks like an angel when she is sleeping, when her face is smooth and peaceful. And we find ourselves asking when heaven will want to add another angel, when her suffering will end...

The Only One - Tracy Chapman (Telling Stories album)

She was the only oneOf my flesh and bloodNow I have no callingI can do no worldly good

I sit silentI sit mourningI sit listless all the dayI've mostly lost the voice to speakAnd any words to say exceptDoes heaven have enough angels yet?

I've gone hardAnd I've gone coldI can't make the piece of this cracked life fitPlease forgive me for wanting to knowDoes heaven have enough angels yet?

Together oh together No there'll be no more of thatBut I would not dare for myself to askDoes heaven have enough angels yet?She was the only oneOf my own flesh and bloodSometimes I hear her callingStraight from the house of god

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

California Dreamin'

I have three sisters left. Two are ill, one terminally so. The third is the twin of the one who is terminal. She is exhausted from months of care-giving and is wondering how she is going to live life without her twin. My step-mother cries a lot, and prays. My father is stressed, tired, infinitely sad. My father's sister just had surgery. My father's brother is in the hospital. My mother's brother is disabled and unwell.

Its crazy.

Meanwhile, my life is assuming a new rhythm. My step-mother is happy I'm here. I am a breath of fresh air, she says, a big-energy person who fills a room, and ever the astonishing child. I try to be upbeat and positive, to radiate compassion, to hold her when she cries over her daughter's suffering. I show everyone photos of Tammy, of Oregon, of my travels, and entice them to eat things they've never had before: mini-wedges of mango and ginger stilton, slices of warm artisan bread with chevre, balls of gorgonzola rolled in chopped nuts and baked. Slices of english cucumber with mascarpone and bits of cured meat, fruit, or nuts on top.

Some nights I take my turn checking on Caro every two hours, making sure she is comfortable, applying topical medications, adjusting the blankets. Pain has creased her forehead prematurely. Her eyes are tired. She sleeps a lot, and when she speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper. Soon, we hope. Soon her suffering will end, please, oh merciful God we pray, amen.

Sometimes at night my body curls around the grief in my middle, and I cry. Sometimes, sleepless, I open my laptop and write.

And sometimes I listen to my self-hypnosis scripts. Relax, my own voice tells me. Bathe in the healing white light of my consciousness. Know myself as the possibility of freedom, of joy, and powerful peace. Listen to the sea birds, imagine myself swimming the ocean, rocking in it, comforted by it, my own tears of sadness blending with it. Awaken rested, refreshed, at peace, my own voice whispers into my ears just before I end the trance and send myself to sleep.

And in the morning I am strong again, a mountain of light with just a few spots of erosion showing. No landslides yet. (A twinge. Tammy's favorite song: Landslide.)

Some days I spend at a friend's house, taking a time-out. We watch movies and play games, taking breaks to go for sushi and dim sum. He does his best to make me smile, and lets me snuggle up to him, and just be. And best of all, at his place I can sleep. Sometimes I stretch out on his bed and nap with his cat in the sunlight, letting the ocean breeze tickle my skin.

Life is what it is. The plague will pass. Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to live each day fully, even in extraordinary circumstances like these.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Travel clothes

I wear skirts when I travel. I generally wear skirts regardless of whether I am flying or driving, and except in cases of deep snow, regardless of the weather. Most women I know think I'm nuts. But I have my reasons, good reasons.

Skirts are comfortable. They are unrestrictive, allowing a full range of motion. If they get twisted, they do not tug or cut painfully into anything. They allow for air-flow when it is hot. When it is cold, bike shorts or leggings can be worn underneath without compromising comfort.

But regardless of these practicalities, there is a better reason to wear skirts when traveling: People are more courteous. I find that when I am wearing a skirt or dress, people are more polite. Bus, tram, trolly, and shuttle drivers always rush to help me with my bags. Service staff at hotels, restaurants and airports are both more deferential and helpful. People hold open the doors and let me pass first. And men are more admiring and appreciative. I've had several comments from men about how nice it is to see a woman in skirts.

I assure you, chivalry is not dead. It is simply that men's responses to feminism have driven it underground. I have observed that while most men will be solicitous toward women given the opportunity, they are less likely to act upon their chivalrous urges when the fairer sex is wearing pants. It seems to me that men unconsciously interpret the wearing of pants as a woman's declaration of independence.

A woman in skirts however, ah! now she is the target of all the bottled-up chivalry that men have less and less opportunity to express in this world of gender parity. She has dropped something, Oh, here, let me get that for you. Oh, no need to pump your own gas, I'm almost finished with mine, I'll be happy to do yours next. Please, take this full-sized car instead of the mid-sized, no extra charge. You'll be more comfortable. A lady should never eat alone, may I join you? Please, you take this elevator, I'll wait for the next. Its pouring rain and you've no umbrella? Please share mine. Here, let me get that door for you.

I am by no means helpless, in fact, quite the opposite. But there is an implied social contract between a woman in skirts and the rest of the world. In exchange for their solicitousness and courtesy, for providing them the opportunity to be gentle-people, I am smiling, gracious, and receptive: a lady.

I dress like a lady, act like a lady, and in return, I am treated like one.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Blue toes

I leaned back into his couch and put my bare feet up on the table. I smoothed my skirt across my thighs, enjoying the feel of the fabric.

"What's this?" he asked, leaning over to look at my feet. "Blue toes?"

I grinned and lifted my leg, sliding my shin along his cheek until my toes were just inches from his face.

"I had a pedicure today. Do you like?"

He studied my toenails. I'd chosen a metallic blue nailpolish that went really well with several of the skirts I wear this time of year. The nail art on my big toes was done in delicate silver, black and white dots and curliques.

"Very nice," he said, taking my feet into his warm hands.

"Mmmm," I purred. I hadn't realized they were chilled until he'd touched them.

I wriggled around on the couch until my shoulders were braced by the arm and my feet were in his lap. He proceeded to give my feet and legs an acupressure and massage treatment that had me limp as a kitten within 10 minutes. Which is no mean feat given my stress level of late.

"I'll miss you," he said, as he lifted my foot and kissed it. His hand slid along the underside of my thigh until his fingertips brushed my bare mound.

I'd forgotten myself in the sheer pleasure of the moment, and neglected to keep my thighs together. How long had he been looking up my skirt? I wondered, and then decided it didn't matter. I was certain that the voyeur in him deemed it a fair trade for a delicious foot rub.

About Me

Silken's perspective on sensuality is as unique as her erotica is delightfully arousing. She chose to go "public" with her erotic material because she hopes to awaken more people to the sensual immediacy of life with the goal of enriching their sexual relationships with themselves and their partners.

*Note: All content of this weblog--except where attributed--is original, and copyright is held by me*

QUOTES MEANINGFUL TO ME

I walk, and I notice. I am sensual in order to be spiritual. I look into everything without cutting into anything. --Winter hours, p100 (Mary Oliver)

The spiritualization of sexuality is called love. It is a great triumph over Christianity. --(Nietzche)

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as a poem. No why or wherefore, no direction, no goal, no striving, no evolving. Like the enigmatic Chinaman one is rapt by the everchanging spectacle of passing phenomena. This is the sublime, the a-moral state of the artist, he who lives only in the moment, the visionary moment of utter, far-reaching lucidity. Such clear, icy sanity that it seems like madness. --(Henry Miller)

Why does the word 'reality' always have such a sinister, gray, fatalistic ring? It is the realists - that is to say, the death-eaters - who are responsible. But the men who are thoroughly wide-awake and completely alive are in reality, and for these reality has always been close to ecstasy. --(Henry Miller)

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. --(Henry Miller)

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. - (Anais Nin)

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. --(Anais Nin)

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy. --(Anais Nin)

Electric flesh-arrows... traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.--(Anais Nin)

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. --(Anais Nin)

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. --(Anais Nin)

I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I donâ€™t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I donâ€™t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding. --(Anais Nin)

I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic -- in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself. --(Anais Nin)

I'm of the mind that we can always fuck indoors; its the semi-public sexual excitement that makes things interesting. --(KR SilkenVoice)

Good sex is artful and intuitive. Great sex is artful, intuitive, and informed by communication and observation. Often, it is what our partner doesn't say that is most telling. --(KR SilkenVoice)

I am a person of conscience. And while I have few morals in the sense most people do, I am conscious that others have them, and I prefer not to lead them astray... My values are very simple and I live in harmony with them: I do what makes me happy. And I try not to do what will make me unhappy. --(KR SilkenVoice)

I am sapiosexual. I think geeks and nerds are sexy--I often want to rub my clit against their minds. --(KR SilkenVoice)

Intimacy is best served spontaneously. --(KR Silkenvoice)

Words, phrases, syllables, stars that turn around a fized center. Two bodies, many beings that meet in a word. the paper is covered with indelible letters that no one spoke, that no one dictated, that have fallen there and ignite and burn and go out. This is how poetry exists; how love exists. --(Octavio Paz)

Even in the midst of our vulgar civilization we, if lacking God, have at least the cosmic elements. These great essences have a singular value for that psychic-sensuous contemplation which is the secret of lasting happiness. --A Philosophy of Solitude, p7 (John Cowper Powys)

Shan is a sudden mystical experience closely associated with everyday life, regarding it as a blessed gift, and enjoying every moment of it. I would call it gratitude for living, a form of Oriental existentialism. There is a sense of the mystery of the mere act of living. A Shan monk enjoys the humble chores. €�It is a miracle I am drawing water from a well! All life and all living are miracles. --From Pagan to Christian, p170 (Yutang Lin)

The purpose of our lives is to be happy. --(The 14th Dalai Lama)

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.--(The 14th Dalai Lama)

The art of contentment is the recognition that the most satisfying and the most dependably refreshing experiences of life lie not in great things but in little. The rarity of happiness among those who achieved much is evidence that achievement is not in itself the assurance of a happy life. The great, like the humble, may have to find their satisfaction in the same plain things. --(Edgar A. Collard)

Often, the true glory of existence is confined to individual consciousness. That'€™s okay. Let us live for the beauty of our own reality. --Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Tom Robbins)

Of the desires some are natural, others vain, and of the natural some are necessary and others merely natural; of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and others for very life. (Epicurus)

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. --(Emily Dickinson)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (Mark Twain)

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. --(Eden Phillpotts)

Love is like a reservoir of kindness and pleasure, like silos and pools during a siege. --(Yehuda Amichai)

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live... These are the only hours that are not wasted -- these hours that absorb the soul and fill it with beauty. This is real life, and all else is illusion, or mere endurance. --(Richard Jeffries)
We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure. --(Gerald Brenan)

Leisure is the Mother of Philosophy. --(Thomas Hobbes)

Leisure may prove to be a curse rather than a blessing, unless education teaches a flippant world leisure is not a synonym for entertainment. --(William J. Bogan)

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon. --(Susan Ertz)

Where the Dow replaces the Tao, all life becomes desecrated. --(Franck A Little)

Amusement...the happiness of those who cannot think. --(Alexander Pope)

So little does life, in its larger, simpler aspects interest usâ€¦ that in order to titillate our jaded senses, the very arts of our time have to crack their whips â€¦and skin themselves alive for our delight. --A Philosophy of Solitude, p46 (John Cowper Powys)

I find nothing in fables more astonishing than my experience in every hour. One moment of a man's life is a fact so stupendous as to take the luster out of fiction. --(Emerson)

You wake up in the morning, and lo! Your purse is magically filled with 24 hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life. It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. --(Arnold Bennett)

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. --(Stephen Vincent Benet)

From the philosopher's viewpoint almost all the activities of men appear to me as vain and useless. --(Descartes)

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream. --(Virginia Woolf)

The purpose of meditation practice is not enlightenment; it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life. --(Peter Matthiessen)

American Indian lore speaks of our existence as a threefold miracle: â€œthat things exist at all, that life came out of things, and finally, that life became conscious of itself.â€� â€¦ We take these three amazing facts of our existence for granted. We become desensitized and behave as if these perpetual miracles were unimportant in the conduct of our daily lives.
--(Duane Elgin)

To live more consciously means to be more consciously aware, moment by moment, that we are present in all that we do.
--(Duane Elgin)

We teach our children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense of the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all men, is now a rare gift. --(Abraham Joshua Herschel)

Thinking is learning all over again to see, to be attentive, to focus consciousness; it is turning every idea and every image into a privileged moment. What justifies thought is its extreme consciousness. --(Camus)

Most of one's life. . . is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking. --(Aldous Huxley)

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. --(E.B. White)

When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much. --(Fen-Yang)

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. --(Jean Arp)

In us or through us the Primal Mind will have contemplated and enjoyed its own works and will continue to do so as long as human life endures on this planet --(John Burroughs)

The wonder to me is that Man is not even more astounded and dumbfounded than he appears to be each hour of his presence here; that he is not more withdrawn from his so called necessities than he really is, in order to sit beneath a tree, Buddha fashion, and gaze in wonder and astonishment upon the wholly inexplicable world about him.
--(Theodore Dreiser)

I must tell you that I should really like to think there is something wrong with me. Because, if there isn't, then there is something wrong with the world itself - and that is much more frightening. --(T.S. Eliot, Letters)

Hume argued acquisitiveness was one of the most basic drives. The true statesman must recognize this fact. Since most people were governed mainly by ambition and avarice, these vices should be imaginatively channeled to work toward the public good. Such passions could be controlled only by other passions; to expect virtue to reign was hopelessly naive. (David Shi)

What can you say about profit and fame to a solitary and untroubled mountain monk. Weeds of delusion don't grow in the mind where flowers of wisdom bloom. --(Stonehouse)

I'm erecting a barrier of simplicity between myself and the world. --(Andre Gide)

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. --(Einstein)

My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements... but to be consistent with the truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. --(Tolstoy)

We who revel in nature's diversity... tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. --(Stephen Jay Gould)

It is only logical that the pauperization of soul and the soul of society coincide with the pauperization of the environment. One is the cause and reflection of the other. --(Paolo Soleri)

When I hear somebody say 'Life is hard', I am always tempted to ask 'Compared to what?' --(Sydney J. Harris)

This weblog is an attempt at giving voice to the sensual immediacy of everyday life.
*Note: All content of this weblog--except where noted--is original, and copyright is held by me.*
(c) Kayar Silkenvoice, 2005 - 2009